In many discussion forums, the question, "Why, out of the whole of the Universe, would aliens choose Earth to visit?"

Check this out (http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080701/sc_space/earthscriesrecordedinspace) - if I heard this and had the capability to get there, I'd want to check it out!

What do you think?

irishwarrior

07-01-2008, 07:41 AM

Freaky. If I were an alien I'd definitely want to check out all that noise.

HelpDeskHustler

07-01-2008, 07:58 AM

There's no point in saying anything on a signal, something that's very meaningful to us electronically and for the most part probably could means nothing to them because of the way we format the audio. IMO just one long constant beep would be more meaningful because it would be less likely to be attributed with static or chance. We could be picking up trillions of signals at SETI that aren't interpreted as audio but just static because of the way we decode it. That's why SETI doesn't even look for an audible signal (like "Contact" made it seem) but instead for very powerful wave, like described in this article.

I'm pretty sure right now we aren't sending encoded audio into space, but instead raw radio waves, which are the same frequency as sound, but are transversal and can travel through space, unlike sound.

DFSniper

07-01-2008, 08:27 AM

ah, i thought this thread would answer "why did the chicken cross the road?" :nododgy: but thats what i get for just waking up.

still pretty interesting stuff though.

battlechaser

07-01-2008, 08:43 AM

With the universe being as large as it is, contact seems like it'd be finding a needle in a corn field, the haystack would be our solar system alone. I think the real question is, if there is another evolved race such as ourselves, do we really want to meet them? Because personally, we haven't even really learned to live with one another yet. Just my $0.02.

vikingshadow

07-01-2008, 10:33 AM

There's no point in saying anything on a signal, something that's very meaningful to us electronically and for the most part probably could means nothing to them because of the way we format the audio. IMO just one long constant beep would be more meaningful because it would be less likely to be attributed with static or chance. We could be picking up trillions of signals at SETI that aren't interpreted as audio but just static because of the way we decode it. That's why SETI doesn't even look for an audible signal (like "Contact" made it seem) but instead for very powerful wave, like described in this article.

I'm pretty sure right now we aren't sending encoded audio into space, but instead raw radio waves, which are the same frequency as sound, but are transversal and can travel through space, unlike sound.

Uh oh, someone didn't read the article! :p There's nothing about us physically sending signals into space. This is a natural phenomenon that we just verified recently.

Basically, it says that the cosmic rays from the sun are interacting with our ionosphere which results in a "screech" sound being sent into the universe as a beam. Should an alien culture have the capability and the gumption, they could "hear" the signal, and if they have the wherewithal, my asumption would be that they'd come investigate (assuming, of course, that they are as curious as humans are.)

Be kind of cool, if you don't assume they're evil, world stealing beasts that want to destroy all humanity...:rolleyes:

badlandsrox

07-01-2008, 11:42 AM

Something to think about...

Say there is another life form similar to us in the universe... Closest galaxies are thousands of light years away, which means that even if they were to travel the speed of light, it would take thousands of years to reach us. now factor in that there are many more galaxies millions even billions of lightyears away, meaning speed of light travel would take billions of years. Now, say galaxy A is way more advanced than us, and started out where we are now. If they send out some of their people to come find another similar planet, they will be travelling maybe a couple hundered, maybe million miles an hour (comparatively, the present shuttles travel somewhere around 17 or 18 thousand miles per hour), It is going to take them an exponential amount of years to reach us. Then factor in the fact that they are travelling in a spacecraft, which ultimatly will need ongoing maintainance to keep it running, as well as fuel to power it on its journey, food would need to be on board, medical supplies, things to keep people entertained their entire living life (even if they were to live a thousand years, or even a million, there is still many generations who would have spent their entire life just being there, never leaving the ship), I could go on and on and on about supplies, but the point is that they are going to need a giant ship to bring them this far out of their galaxy. Many generations of inbreeding would occur due to the closed environment of the ship, meaning many original features of their race would be long gone by now. They probably would not have planned on spending umpteen billion years trying to find another similar planet, they would be nothing at all like the original people of their planet as they have not been there in many many years, unless they have a 100% efficient system to cleanse, recylce and reuse everything that was brought along, at this far in the journey they would almost definatly be long gone due to no way of finding/building/growing new supplies, and also they would not have so much as radio contact with their home planet (well they may, but the lag would be somewhere possibly around 15 or 20 thousand years, and thats with no signal decay or interferance. Remember I said that this is based on the fact that they sent out a search party somewhere in the first couple hundred years of the formation of the universe? That gives them 13 billion years right now, and if they are even just one million light years away, that is 1,000,000 x 5,878,625,373,183.61 and that is how far away in miles they are, I know my math may be a little wrong their, but you get my drift, now factor in that they are travelling at maybe 1 million miles per hour, which is 1/600th the speed of light, and you realise that it would take a long LONG time for anyone to reach us. Finally, that is all considering they take a straight line here, chances are it would be more of a wandering trip, because they do not know where we are, which raises the figures exponentially. Now you know what the chances are of an outer contact anytime soon :P

I have more, however its canada day here :caflag:, and I am supposed to have left a few min's ago, i may add on a little more later, but for now, thats as far as i'm going.

irishwarrior

07-01-2008, 12:11 PM

^ Theoretically if you were to move fast enough, time would travel backwards, on the space shuttle even, they travel as much as 30 seconds back in time. Also, you're thinking as if these aliens would be humanoid in needs, reproduction, etc... the event of them being humanoid at all would be highly improbable due to the fact that their evolution would be under vastly different circumstances. Just food for thought.

We know it's impossible to travel at the speed of light, and even if we could, as stated, it still would take a long time to get somewhere. So, imagine space as a flat piece of paper laying on a table. Normally, we travel along the face of the paper, like an ant walking across it. Folding space would be like folding paper - so, instead of traveling through space, it's folded in half and then you cross the distance by moving through the layers instead of along the flat plane...esentially "jumping" from one spot in the universe to anothe, distance notwithstanding.

Mmuch quicker and according to the last report I read, doable in the not so distant distant future...physicists are so cool!

We know it's impossible to travel at the speed of light, and even if we could, as stated, it still would take a long time to get somewhere. So, imagine space as a flat piece of paper laying on a table. Normally, we travel along the face of the paper, like an ant walking across it. Folding space would be like folding paper - so, instead of traveling through space, it's folded in half and then you cross the distance by moving through the layers instead of along the flat plane...esentially "jumping" from one spot in the universe to anothe, distance notwithstanding.

Mmuch quicker and according to the last report I read, doable in the not so distant distant future...physicists are so cool!

Ah, forgot about that concept. Physics and time concepts are amazing, though as DFSniper said can make your brain cramp.

cyberthrasher_706

07-01-2008, 02:35 PM

well, I haven't read the article yet (it's next on the list) but since we're talking physics and I just brushed up on my string theory videos last night. Remember Einsteins theories on gravity and the fact that his equations show the universe as flat, yet warpable. Meaning that, even though it seems that we are moving along a flat surface of a universe, it also bends and curves, making the possibility of "worm holes" possible to accompolish this task of travel. Picture a piece of paper rolled over onto itself and you'll get the idea. Now, many physicists are divided on the possibility of creating a worm hole, as opposed to stumbling upon one that is already there, but those who believe that we could essentially tear the space-time continuum are confident that "strings" would protect the tear and allow it to reseal after we're done with our journey. So, perhaps these distant life forms have developed the technology to make this tear. I lost track of my train of thought. Time to go read the article.

HelpDeskHustler

07-03-2008, 10:41 AM

I did read the article vike, I was just commenting on how an immensely powerful signal is actually BETTER. Also there are theoretical particles that travel faster than the speed of light, they're called tachyons.